Title: Resilience: Connecting with Nature in a Time of Crisis
Author: Melanie Choukas-Bradley
Publisher: Changemaker Books
Pages: 80
Publication Date: May 15th, 2020
Nature is one of the best medicines for difficult times. An intimate awareness of the natural world, even within the city, can calm anxieties and help create healthy perspectives.
This book will inspire and guide you as you deal with the current crisis, or any personal or worldly distress.
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and certified forest therapy guide who leads nature and forest bathing walks for many organizations in Washington, D.C. and the American West.
Learn from her the Japanese art of "forest bathing": how to tune in to the beauty and wonder around you with all your senses, even if your current sphere is a tree outside the window or a wild backyard. Discover how you can become a backyard naturalist, learning about the trees, wildflowers, birds and animals near your home. Nature immersion during stressful times can bring comfort and joy as well as opportunities for personal growth, expanded vision and transformation.
The "Resilience Series" is the result of an intensive, collaborative effort of our authors in response to the 2020 coronavirus epidemic. Each volume offers expert advice for developing the practical, emotional and spiritual skills that you can master to become more resilient in a time of crisis.
This book is short and sweet in its content. The author provides simple steps to get back into nature, to connect and to build relationships with the land and natural spaces around you. I really appreciated the three steps to forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku - it really is as simple as unplugging, connecting, and then reintegrating into the everyday with the thread of awareness around you.
The third chapter on becoming a backyard naturalist was a big wake up call for me - I have spaces to explore outdoors, and yet I often ignore them for the screen and the next item on the to do list (the next book to read - hah!)
If only I took some of these moments outdoors I'd be able to observe, and intertwine nature with the mindfulness and meditation practices that I often feel I'm neglecting. It was a great chapter of reminders of what mindfulness and meditative practices can actually look like.
If only I took some of these moments outdoors I'd be able to observe, and intertwine nature with the mindfulness and meditation practices that I often feel I'm neglecting. It was a great chapter of reminders of what mindfulness and meditative practices can actually look like.
For those with children chapter 4 will be helpful for you - Family Time in Nature. I skimmed this chapter as I don't have need for these tips.
The chapter on foraging was a teeny lackluster for me - it's more of a very brief overview instead of an in depth guide. For those who are looking for more solid information you'll have to pick up a different guidebook that fully encompasses safety and identification of plants that can be foraged in your area.
Overall, I think this is a hopeful little guide of things that can help us fall back to the healing powers of nature that is around us while we are still in the middle of a global pandemic, even if many of us wish we weren't and are trying to pretend it doesn't exist anymore.
For nature enthusiasts and Pagans alike, I give 4 Triquetras to this one!
About the Author
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a Washington, DC author and naturalist who leads field trips, tree tours and forest bathing walks for the Audubon Naturalist Society, the United States Botanic Garden, Smithsonian Associates, the Rock Creek Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, Politics & Prose, the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies and other organizations. Melanie’s newest book is Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island, illustrated by Tina Thieme Brown, with a foreword by Dr. Thomas Lovejoy (September 2020). She is also author of Resilience—Connecting With Nature in a Time of Crisis, with a foreword by Wendy Paulson (May 2020), and The Joy of Forest Bathing—Reconnect With Wild Places & Rejuvenate Your Life, illustrated by Lieke van der Vorst, with Spanish and Finnish translations (2018). Melanie is the author of A Year in Rock Creek Park: The Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington, DC, with photographs by Susan Austin Roth (2014). The book was awarded a 2015 Independent Publishers’ IPPY silver medal for mid-Atlantic nonfiction.
Melanie is the author of three other critically acclaimed books: City of Trees—The Complete Field Guide to the Trees of Washington, DC, illustrated by Polly Alexander, with a foreword by Adrian Higgins, and now in its third edition (2008); An Illustrated Guide to Eastern Woodland Wildflowers and Trees: 350 Plants Observed at Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland, illustrated by Tina Thieme Brown (2004, 2007); and Sugarloaf: The Mountain’s History, Geology, and Natural Lore, illustrated by Tina Thieme Brown (2003).
Melanie is also a long-time contributor to The Washington Post and other publications, and she has appeared as an author and guest expert on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, WAMU’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show and Senator Bill Bradley’s American Voices, Sirius XM Radio. In 2014, Melanie was awarded one of four inaugural Canopy Awards by Casey Trees, for her efforts to educate people about the trees of Washington, DC. A Certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide, Melanie is a member of the National Advisory Council of the Rachel Carson Council and sits on the Advisory Board of Capital Nature and the Advisory Committee of the Montgomery Countryside Alliance.
Bio Source: https://melaniechoukas-bradley.com/about/
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